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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Job 36:13 - 36:13
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
13 Yet the hypocrites in heart cherish wrath,
They cry not when He hath chained them.
14 Thus their soul dieth in the vigour of youth,
And their life is like that of the unclean.
15 Yet He delivereth the sufferer by his affliction,
And openeth their ear by oppression.
He who is angry with God in his affliction, and does not humbly pray to Him, shows thereby that he is a חָנֵף, one estranged from God (on the idea of the root, vid., i. 216), and not a צדיק. This connection renders it natural to understand not the divine wrath by אָף: θησαυρίζουσιν ὀργήν (Rosenm. after Rom 2:5), or: they heap up wrath upon themselves (Wolfson, who supplies עֲלֵיהֶם), but the impatience, discontent, and murmuring of man himself: they cherish or harbour wrath, viz., בְּלִבָּם (comp. Job 22:22, where שׁים בלב signifies to take to heart, but at the same time to preserve in the heart). Used thus absolutely, שִׂים signifies elsewhere in the book, to give attention to, Job 4:20; Job 24:12; Job 34:23, or (as Arab. wḍ‛) to lay down a pledge; here it signifies reponunt s. recondunt (with an implied in ipsis), as also Arab. šâm, fut. i, to conceal with the idea of sinking into (immittentem), e.g., the sword in the sheath. With תָּמֹת, for וְתָּמֹת (Isa 50:2) or וְתָמֹת, the punishment which issues forth undistinguished from this frustration of the divine purpose of grace follows ἀσυνδέτως, as e.g., Hos 7:16. חַיָּה interchanges with נפשׁ, as Job 33:22, Job 33:28; נֹעַר (likewise a favourite word with Elihu) is intended just as Job 33:25, and in the Psa 88:16, which resembles both the Elihu section and the rest of the book. The Beth of בַּקְּדֵשִׁים has the sense of aeque ac (Targ. הֵיךְ), as Job 34:36, comp. תַּחַת, Job 34:26. Jer. translates inter effeminatos; for קְדֵשִׁים (heathenish, equivalent to קְדֹושִׁים, as כְּמָרִים, heathenish, equivalent to כֹּהֲנִים) are the consecrated men, who yielded themselves up, like the women in honour of the deity, to passive, prematurely-enervating incontinence (vid., Keil on Deu 23:18), a heathenish abomination prevailing now and again even in Israel (1Ki 14:24; 1Ki 15:12; 1Ki 22:47), which was connected with the worship of Astarte and Baal that was transferred from Syria, and to which allusion is here made, in accordance with the scene of the book. For the sufferer, on the other hand, who suffers not merely of necessity, but willingly, this his suffering is a means of rescue and moral purification. Observe the play upon the words יְחַלֵּץ and בְּלַחַץ. The Beth in both instances is, in accordance with Elihu's fundamental thought, the Beth instrum.